The ILO adopted an updated Development Cooperation Strategy for 2015–17 to define areas where the ILO needs to take action to deliver results on decent work. It reflects recent developments in international development thinking, including the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (Addis Ababa, July 2015) and the 2030 Agenda, and emphasizes the principle of national ownership. The new strategy identifies key areas of focus, including the SDGs, Decent Work Country Programmes, and coherence with the UN system; more balanced resource allocation; and the special needs of countries facing fragility. It aims to develop fewer but bigger development cooperation projects in order to adhere to programme priorities, maximize impact and reduce overheads. ILO projects will be overseen by decent work committees in Member States. Attention will also be given to rolling out knowledge sharing methods and systems.

A key element in the new Development Cooperation Strategy is the further decentralization of the administration of projects. By end 2017 it is foreseen that some 80 per cent of all projects will be managed by the ILO’s field structure, compared to 63 per cent in 2013. This will require increased investment in training and coaching.

Resource mobilization

The new strategy also foresees the consolidation of partnerships with 20 top contributors, accompanied by further moves to diversify sources of funding and expand those showing promise for growth in the past biennium, such as domestic trust funds, public-private partnerships, SSTC, and the international financial institutions.

Renewed efforts will be made to conclude new multi-year partnerships with core partners and also with emerging and private partners. The Regular Budget Supplementary Account (RBSA) will be promoted among potential partners.

Measuring impact

In response to increasing demand for ILO programmes and projects to demonstrate impact, the ILO has developed a three-pronged strategy to strengthen capacity in technical departments to measure the impact of their work. This involved a group concept mapping exercise to develop a collective framework and vision for defining, planning and discussing impact evaluation in the ILO; followed by the establishment of a help-desk to provide quality control (ex-ante) and assistance in designing impact evaluations. The final part, which will start in 2017, will involve ex-post quality controls on a two-yearly basis to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the impact evaluation designs.

Transparency, accountability, value for money

Major strides have been made on several fronts to improve the transparency of the ILO’s financial and technical operations in order to increase its accountability to Member States and deliver greater value for money.

During the biennium the ILO launched its Development Cooperation Dashboard, which provides public information on all voluntarily funded projects through a variable matrix linking the donor partners concerned, the subject-area, and the geographical location. This will be further developed to include data on regular budget development cooperation.

For the first time the ILO made its development cooperation data publicly available in the format agreed by the International Aid Transparency Initiative. Data was also submitted for the first time to the OECD database on core-funded operations.